


All there is

by Kira_Gold



Series: Homestuck random character prompts :з [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Blood, Dream Bubbles, F/M, How Do I Tag, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Stitching wounds, fluff-ish, not graphic tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8023567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Gold/pseuds/Kira_Gold
Summary: Gamzee is dead and Aradia is asleep.No-no-no, this won’t do at all. After all, she doesn’t need to be asleep to spend her time in dream bubbles, listening to mind-shattering whispers of horrorterrors or spectating thousands of doomed so-familiar-yet-new faces. After all, he does not die, no matter the timeline. So this won’t do. But it doesn’t matter.





	All there is

**Author's Note:**

> So I asked my friend who hasn't read Homestuck (or at least all of it) to give me two random characters to write about, and a prompt. I went quite - very - off track, but I still like the way it turned out :з  
> Not beta-read.

Gamzee is dead and Aradia is asleep.

No-no-no, this won’t do at all. After all, she doesn’t need to be asleep to spend her time in dream bubbles, listening to mind-shattering whispers of horrorterrors or spectating thousands of doomed so-familiar-yet-new faces. After all, he does not die, no matter the timeline. So this won’t do. But it doesn’t matter.

Gamzee is sitting on the sand. Aradia — in the branches of the only tree in the desert. 

Neither know whose memory they are in, neither care. After all, they can’t care about such trivial stuff anymore — she died too many times, he killed too many friends. They can’t even cry — but their eyes water from the wind and the sand and the sun. 

Gamzee looks at the ground, Aradia — at the sky. 

She can fly, he can barely walk. He has bullet holes throughout his body, but the purple blood is barely visible on the purple colour of Rage. Her eyes are almost as rusty as her blood and almost as red as Time on her outfit. Red and purple are so far apart on the hemospectrum and so close on the colour wheel. 

Gamzee notices the Maid almost immediately, Aradia doesn’t realise Bard’s presence for almost too long. 

He coughs, almost choking, and his blood stands too much out on the yellow sand, glittering in sun rays. She gasps, jumping-flying-falling down from the tree, her face almost exaggeratedly-panicked.  
“Gamzee?”  
“Aradia,” he grins unkindly, his face paint more purple then white or black, acknowledging her presence. 

Aradia doesn’t know what to say, Gamzee doesn’t want to speak.

He is half-laying on the floor, sand getting into his wounds, clogging the bloodstream, scratching, and she is standing in front of him, sand getting into her shoes and bandages on her legs, but not troubling her at all.  
“What happened?” she exhales finally. Gamzee growls.  
“I got shot.”  
“A few… what… hundred times?” Aradia frowns, stepping forward, and he jumps up, barely managing not to fall immediately after, and points a club at her, his hand shaking.  
“Don’t you motherfucking dare come any closer.”

Aradia just wants to help. Gamzee doesn’t _want_ her to help. 

“Gamzee, as much as I like corpses, I assure you, being one is not a pleasant experience!” she exclaims, raising her hands in a gesture of giving up. “I am not going to hurt you, I promise!”  
“Exactly,” he hisses. “Ex-motherfucking-actly. You’re not. And I deserve to be hurt.”  
“You… What the heck are you saying?” Aradia bites her lip. Yes, she knows all about what Gamzee did. What Gamzees always do, no mater the timeline. Kill their friends and never — never-ever — die. 

Gamzee wants to be the one exception to at least the last part. _Aradia_ doesn’t want him to. 

“Gamzee, you are my friend,” she whispers.  
“No,” he replies, his voice hoarse, sharp, piercing. “No I’m not.”  
And she tries to say something, but the wind is suddenly too strong, and the sand is getting into her throat and eyes, and the sand is getting into his wounds.

Gamzee knows he won’t die no matter how much he wants to. Aradia knows that too. 

And so she reaches out in front of her, praying-asking-begging whoever is operating her sylladex instead of her to give her something that could help, and when the cold spirit hand grabs Aradia’s wrist, clutching some bandages and a medicine box in her fingers, she is ready to thank them out loud. Instead, however, she hurries over to Gamzee, sitting him down and throwing his club somewhere behind her.  
“Save the self-loathing for later and just let me treat the wounds.”

Aradia hesitantly touches the purple cloth of the fake godtier suit. Gamzee shudders, but doesn’t recoil. 

She has been in enough archeological expeditions to hurt herself a few dozen times — falling from cliffs, tripping, bashing her head on sharp rocks, — and to learn to stitch wounds. She has enough medicine in her sylladex at all times, and whenever the ghosts decide to actually hand it to her, knows how to use it. Knows to remove the ripped clothes from the bullet holes carefully, to concentrate for a second, changing the place around them, to lay Gamzee down on cold rocks and to wash the no-longer-mattering-high purple blood off the body with ice-cold lake water from her own memory. To open the medicine chest, to get out a needle, half a dozen bottles with some transparent or not-so liquids, to get out some bandages and small forceps for bullets.

Aradia knows what she does hurts, but Gamzee doesn’t even twitch.

He doesn’t twitch when she pierces his skin with a needle again and again, when she pulls the bullets out sharply — at leas fifty of them, how isn’t he yet dead, — he doesn’t twitch no matter what she does. He doesn’t claim it is not painful when she asks, her voice full of concern, but tells her he doesn’t mind.  
“Do whatever. I’m used to it.”  
Gamzee shuts his eyes so he couldn’t see purple drops of blood on the needle, bullets which hit the rocks with a clang each time she pulls one out, so he couldn’t see the worry on her face. He doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t _want_ her to worry. 

Aradia’s hands are shaking, Gamzee lays still like a corpse. 

It takes twenty minutes, a whole meter of bandages and few wrong stitches for her to finish. She doesn’t need a watch to know the time, no time player needs one, and she looks at her hands covered in purple for a few seconds before rinsing them in a lake. Water dilutes the colour, makes it almost-disappear along with any respect left for the hemospectrum — after all, their world is destroyed and it doesn’t matter to either of them any more. Not that it meant much before.  
“Not even a thank you?” Aradia finally asks, her voice shaking and too high and full of fake optimism. Gamzee just hisses in response.  
“No.”  
“Well, what did I expect,” she sighs. “So… who shot you again? I didn’t catch that.”  
“Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to know everything?” Gamzee raises his eyebrows, feeling the bandages tightly wrapped around his chest. “One little bastard.”  
“You could have been more vague,” she snorts and sits down next to him.

Aradia wants to stay here, Gamzee wants her to leave. 

Gamzee wants her to leave. 

_Gamzee wants her to…._

Ugh, he was never a good liar, and convincing yourself is by far the hardest task. Fine.

Aradia wants to stay here and Gamzee doesn’t want her to leave. 

So they sit in silence.  
(No they don’t.)  
Aradia talks and talks, tells of dream bubbles, of this Peixes girl who is trying to assemble an army, of their-timeline-Sollux who is often around and of their-timeline-Feferi who spends time with him quite often. Of humans, of trolls, of all the dead and doomed versions, of corpses and of now-destroyed Alternia, archeology, of her death, not that Gamzee doesn’t know, of anything and everything. Her voice is hoarse and weak and trembling, but she keeps talking, describing, explaining, remembering. 

Aradia talks. Gamzee listens.

“You look so motherfucking tired,” he notes, interrupting her mid-sentence, and she goes quiet, looking down. “When did you even sleep last?”  
“Even a player of Time cannot follow the — the time in dream bubbles, you know,” she shrugs almost apologetically. “Like, minutes and hours are fine, but days go by and—”  
“Sis,” Gamzee interrupts, covering her mouth with his hand. “Sleep.”  
And she puts her head on his knees and closes her eyes.  
“Okay.”

Aradia wakes up and Gamzee is gone.

And not that she is surprised. He is alive and unlike her has no business in the Realm of the Dead. And of course he isn’t obliged to say goodbye, after all they aren’t exactly friends. Of course it was just a one time event — he needed help, she could provide said help. Exactly what a Maid is supposed to do. 

Needless to say, one time event it is not. 

Next time they meet, Aradia is walking through someone’s memory of a human park and Gamzee is hiding behind the tree. She winces when he jumps out, laughing maniacally, and then joins in with his laughter just for long enough to notice more bullet wounds. Why does his costume have to be so similar to his blood colour?!  
“Again?!” she half-questions and Gamzee shrugs ironically before falling to the ground — this time there are a few holes in his leg, too. “Same little bastard?”  
“Who else,” he croaks. 

Aradia sits down near him, getting out the medicine, and this time Gamzee doesn’t even twitch from her touches. 

He has cuts and bullet holes and bruises and burns and stains of blood all over his body every time she sees him. One is definitely an accident, two could be a coincidence, but when she meets him the third time, Aradia smiles lightly to herself — so he _is_ looking for her specifically. The thought of that feels warm.

And then it becomes just a usual part of her life. Walk around dream bubbles, watch, observe, meet people, stitch up Gamzee, spend three or more hours talking to him, and when he leaves go observing again. Tell Aradia a few sweeps or so ago, if sweeps are even a thing in the afterlife, that she would be friends with Gamzee Makara — she would look at you with empty robotic eyes and shake her head. And now she drags him around her favourite memories, talking, listening, laughing and arguing, and he follows her with not a grin, but a smile. 

Nepeta and Equius may have a perfect moirallegiance, but Aradia can settle for stitching up his wounds and having someone as understanding to talk to. What she has is quite enough for her.

Because Gamzee smiles at her and Aradia smiles back. 

Because Aradia tells stories and Gamzee listens.

Because Gamzee makes up jokes and Aradia laughs.

Because Aradia is happy and Gamzee… 

No.  
No-no-no-no, this won’t do _at all ___.

Because _they_ are happy.  


And that’s all there is to it. 


End file.
